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The Spy Who Loved Gadgets

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DQI Bureau
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Ah! James Bond. The pulse quickens, the heart beats faster. Expectation

permeates the air. It is difficult to believe how such a pedestrian sounding

name has come to hold the promise of some of life’s greatest adventures. For

aficionados and fans James Bond means many things. Fast cars and faster women.

Impeccably tailored clothes and fastidiously prepared martinis. An unabashed

political incorrectness in a sea of politically correct humanity. But most of

all he embodies an obsession with over equipped gadgets that make no excuses for

their outlandishness.

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Sean Connery As James Bond:
Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983)

Hollywood has had more than its shares of super heroes with fancy gadgets–all

the way from Dick Tracy to X-men. But no character or series has exemplified the

fixation with technology, as have the Bond movies.

And not all the Bond technologies have been a figment of someone’s

imagination. In You Only Live Twice (1967) Bond uses a small helicopter called

Little Nellie that is assembled out of four small suitcases. It was actually a

autogyro designed by an RAF engineer called Ken Wallis. It could fly for 47

hours non-stop and packed a wallop of hardware. In Thunderball (1965), he uses a

Jetpack designed by Bell Textron laboratories for the US army which was

seriously considering deploying it for combat soldiers. More recently, US Army

engineers sat down and watched Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies to come up

with the SmarTruck.

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It started with a briefcase



It began innocuously enough. The original Ian Fleming books were totally low

tech. But in the first Bond movie (Dr No — 1961) producers Albert Broccoli and

Harry Saltzman introduced an incidental character called Geoffrey Boothroyd as

the armourer for Bond’s guns. In Russia with Love that character expanded a

little and in a 5 second screen appearance came to give Bond (played by Sean

Connery) a special briefcase. It hid a throwing knife, a foldable 0.25 calibre

rifle and had a powder box that would explode if the case was not opened

properly. It wasn’t strictly high tech — CIA agents in real life were

already using something similar. But those 5 seconds were to define the

character of all Bond films thereon. The public loved it and asked for more.

George

Lazenby:
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The armourer became the quartermaster. The quartermaster became the famed Q.

For a brief time when critics of the early movies didn’t take too kindly to

the technology theme, producers tried experimenting with a more

"realistic" version of Bond. Both movies — Goldfinger and On His

Majesty’s Secret Service flopped. The public had come to love the larger than

life movies and the gizmos. Bond has never looked back since.

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The villains loved the buttons too



One of the elements of Bond movies have been the larger than life villains

who rarely aspired to anything less than total world domination. The methods

they promised to use may sound convoluted but a lot of them were slight

exaggerations based on good theory.

Roger Moore:
Live And Let Die (1973), The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View To A Kill (1985)

In Goldfinger (1964) Auric Goldfinger plans to detonate an atomic bomb in

Fort Knox on the premise that if all US Gold reserves were made radioactive the

price of his gold would skyrocket. While the theory is convoluted, it works.

Gold could pick up a neutron from the blast. However, the unstable form of gold

is more likely to turn into mercury than just remain radioactive. In OHMSS,

Ernst Stavro Blofeld decides to release the "Omega" virus that would

cause infertility in all living beings. That is eminently possible though it

would take more than one strain of virus to do that.

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Timothy Dalton:
The Living Daylights (1987), Licence To Kill (1989)

There are examples galore. In Moonraker( 1979) Hugo Drax produces 50 globes

of nerve gas capable of killing earth’s entire population. But would for some

reason leave animals untouched! Of course we have since learnt of nerve agents

like Tabun, Soman and VX though none of them is so selectively partial toward

animals. In A View to a Killi (1985) Max Zorin decides to demolish silicon

valley by causing an earthquake so he can take control of the microchip

industry. Again — that’s a workable idea. A five megaton underground nuclear

explosion can release seismic waves that measure 6.9 on the Richter scale.

Though of course, they wouldn’t travel too far.

An

Ode to ‘Q’
"…

If it wasn’t for Q Branch you’d have been dead long ago,"

says Q to Bond in License to Kill. And that might most probably be

true considering that James Bond wriggled out of many a sticky spot

using Q’s ingenious gadgets.

Five different actors have played

Bond across 19 movies but only two actors have played Q in all of

the Bond movies. One of them, Desmond Llewelyn, played Q in 17 out

of these and is thought of as the real Q by Bond aficionados.

By the time Goldfinger was

released, Q played by Llewelyn was a part of the Bond legend and had

developed a caustic tongue to berate one Bond after the other. From

Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan, all the Bonds have been on the

receiving end of Q’s smart gadgets and even smarter one liners

like "Pay attention Bond ... and please use this for its

intended purpose, 007" or even a supercilious " grow up,

007."

A former World War II veteran,

Llewelyn was in real life not comfortable with gadgets. He went on

record saying that gadgets ‘expire or explode’ when he touched

them.

Q always practiced what he

preached. In his last Bond movie, he tells 007 "…. Always

have an escape plan." On his insistence, the producers of the

last Bond movie included a sidekick (called R) who would take over Q’s

role after his time. Shortly after, Llewelyn tragically passed away

in car accident. He was 85 and had played Q over a span of 36 years.

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Pierce

Brosnan:
Goldeneye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) Die Another Day (2002)

Increasing sophistication



In recent times of course the technology has become sleeker. The laser watch

and zoom camera with a communications uplink in Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye.

The remote controlled BMW (again workable in theory) and high tech palm top in

The World is Not Enough. The long standing Bond theme of miniaturization that

put Geiger machines and Piton Laser guns in wrist watches. Few people even

question how many of these are workable technologies.

Bond’s lasting legacy however is not just smart technologies that may or

not may not work. It is the off-hand manner in which he used them. A sense of

life that seemed to say anything is possible. Here’s to James Bond and to

unlimited possibilities!

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TV Mahalingam with Sarita Rani in Bangalore

Bond Gadgets

Ahead of Their Time

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The pager



In From Russia with Love released in 1963, Bond carries a pager that beeps

off alerting him that Universal Exports (the cover for MI6) is trying to contact

him. Big deal, today’s mobile readers might contend! The catch is that the

term "pager" itself was first used in 1959, referring to a Motorola

radio communications product and the first consumer pager (as we know it) was

Motorola’s Pageboy I, introduced in 1974, nearly a decade after 007 used it.

Submarine communication



In For Your Eyes Only (1981), the ATAC (Automatic Targeting Attack

Communicator) was a device that used an ultra low frequency coded transmission

to order submarines to launch ballistic missiles. Communication between

submerged submarines and radios on the surface had been one of the biggest

challenges of military engineering in the 20th century. Around the time of the

release of the movie, a stop gap solution was discovered by using ultra low

frequency transmission.

The car phone



In the same movie, Bond uses a sleek car phone to talk to MI6. The crux is

that the first car phone was released in Stockholm in 1956 and it was the size

of a suitcase and weighed 40 kilos. No such clunky gadgets for Bond! Also, the

commercial first car-phone service, was introduced in Britain in 1965, a good 12

years after the release of From Russia with Love.

Reusable rockets



In the You Only Live Twice (1967), the infamous SPECTRE possessed a reusable

rocket called Bird 1, which stood 65 feet tall and took off like a conventional

space rocket, and landed on four retractable pedestals. At that point of time,

the idea of a reusable rocket seemed like a joke but the NASA working prototype

designed in the mid 90s has a striking resemblance with Bird 1.

In-car GPS



In Goldfinger (1964), Bond’s favorite Aston Martin DB5 is equipped with an

onboard radar screen for tracking a large homing device with a range of 150

miles. It can safely be considered as the precursor to GPS and in-car

navigating.

Real life: Cutting Edge Bond Movie Technology

The Aston Martin DB5



The mother of all Bond gadgets — this Q- modeled device was perhaps the

best known of 007’s devices after the Walther PPK. The first customized Bond

car, the Aston Martin was bullet proofed with revolving English, French and

Swiss license plates. The car also sported a pipe that could emit smoke to throw

off pursuers and had Ben Hur like tyre deflators on the left-hand side back

wheel. More dogged chasers were treated to an oil slick! Hidden behind the

parking lights were .30 calibre retractable twin machine guns. Camouflaged

underneath the gear stick top was a little red button that fired the passenger

ejector, just in case! The car was also equipped with an onboard radar screen

for tracking homing devices across the world.

Recently, the US army announced to come out with a ‘SmarTruck’ rigged

with bulletproof glass, grenade launcher, a laser gun and the ability to throw

off pursuers with oil slicks and smoke screens. "Engineers sat down and

watched Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies and some of the other Bond films to

create gadgets for this vehicle like the electrified door handle, or the

bullet-proof wind screens, or the smoke screens," says John Cork, author of

"James Bond, The Legacy."

Attaché case



The first Bond gadget customized by Q’s lab, this innocuous looking

suitcase was featured only in From Russia With Love (1963). A standard issue to

all 007 agents, the normal sized case included an exploding tear gas canister

that went off if the locks were opened normally. Also included in the kit were a

flat throwing knife that could pop out of the side of the case, a collapsible

AR-7 sniper rifle with an infra-red scope and rifle ammunition concealed in

steel tubes and 50 gold sovereigns. In real life, simple exploding suitcases or

briefcases with hidden compartments were standard equipment for the CIA during

World War II.

The jetpack



In Thunderball (1965), Bond is gets out of a sticky situation by strapping

on a jetpack and flying over a mansion to land next to his Aston Martin DB5. In

fact, 007 is so pleased with this gadget that he remarks, "No well dressed

man should be without one".

The jetpack used during the filming of the movie was a real one manufactured

by Bell Textron Laboratories for the US army. During the early 1960’s the U.S.

military seriously considered these devices as potential aids to combat

soldiers. However, the low duration of the rocket fuel required for the belt was

found to be too short-lived for the device to be practical and the idea was

abandoned.

The first public demonstration was made by the Army at Fort Eustice,

Virginia, on June 8, 1961.



One of these devices was even used at the 1984 Olympic Games but the

technology really never took off.

Q’s pet



A remote controlled robot with cameras that acted as its ‘eyes’, Qs pet

appeared in A View To A Kill (1985). The head of the robot could also be

extended upwards to see what was going on above ground level. It also was also

equipped with a microphone. Q uses this to track 007 only to find him in a

shower with a woman.

Such robots have only now become common and were used to explore the debris

and track down survivors of the World Trade Center last year.

The digital watch



In Live and Let Die (1973), Bond is spotted wearing a digital watch. Big

deal, you might say. But considering the fact that the World’s first digital

watch was a Hamilton Pulsar, that available for sale in stores only in 1972 for

a price of $2100, Bond was really on to the bleeding edge tech. Also, the Pulsar

when released had a serious battery problem, which required users to change

batteries in a matter of a few minutes. Nobody saw Bond taking a break to do any

such thing!

Little Nellie



In You Only Live Twice (1967), Q assembles before a stunned ‘Tiger’

Tanaka a mini helicopter called Little Nellie out of four little suitcases. 007

takes off on the ‘Litte Nellie’, to battle the bad guys over Blofeld’s

volcano. Little Nellie is armed to the teeth with twin forward-facing machine

guns, rocket launchers, rear-firing flame-throwers, aerial mines, and

heat-seeking missiles. In reality, Little Nellie was not a helicopter but an

autogyro. It was a Wallis WA-116 also known as a gyroplane. And carrying all

that hardware was no problem for little Nellie as it could lift 3.14 times her

own weight. For the movie, the inventor of the gyroplane flew for 47 hours, up

to heights of 10,000 feet.

The Weird Ones

Underwater breather



Featured in Thunderball (1965), the miniature underwater breather allows the

user to breathe underwater for about four minutes. In fact, the device looked so

convincing in the movie that the British Royal Navy approached the producers of

the movie to know more about it. Unfortunately, till day there is no such

miniature device that allows underwater breathing.

Shark attractor



Featured in Never Say Never Again (1983), what it did was rather simple.

Attach it to a target, activate it and watch it being devoured by sharks. In

theory, this was possible because like whales and dolphins sharks are tuned into

very low-frequency electric fields. These devices can confuse the shark to

thinking that the target is actually dying or injured fish making low frequency

sounds.

X -ray glasses



Featured in The World Is Not Enough (1999), these chic looking glasses use

X-rays to allow 007 in viewing concealed weapons and lingerie. The fact of the

matter is that are most widely used in medicine to view internal organs and

using them to view undergarments is stretching things a bit too far. However, an

alternative could be hand-held ultrasound devices, which could help people study

the contours.

3-D identigraph



Featured in For Your Eyes Only (1981), the 3D Identigraph enabled a person

to type in commands to build up a picture of a person’s face. Once a match was

found the details where displayed on the screen and the image was printed out.

Weird but possible!

Underwater propulsion unit



Featured in Thunderball (1965), an outrageously over equipped device that

had spear guns, a propulsion unit, explosive bottles, yellow ink screen and even

headlights! Sad that 007 blows it up to kill some baddies.

Imitation fingerprints



Featured in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), it allows the user to fool a finger

print identification device. Nowadays, prints fabricated from household

ingredients can beat biometric security systems.

Electro-magnetic RPM controller



Featured in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), its a gambler’s dream comes true!

You simply slip this gadget over your finger and then head towards the nearest

automatic gambling machine. When pressure is applied on the gadget, it rigs the

gambling consoles causing them to throw up jackpots.

XT-7B rockets



Featured in Never Say Never Again (1983), these rockets acted as human

missiles. Once they were fired the normal way, the outer casing would fall away

to reveal a gas powered platform with a person standing on it. In reality, such

speeds would just snap the neck of the person within it.

Miscellaneous

Other famous Bond movie ‘gadgets’ included:



n Poison tipped

spiked shoe,



n A watch that had
a wire hidden inside and could double up as a garrote



n A snorkel suit
which had a stuffed seagull on top



n An edible
radioactive device



n A bowler hat
that could be used a lethal discus



n A safe cracker
that could be used also as a copier



n A flute that
could act as a transmitter



n An imitation
nipple



n A watch that
receive ticker tape messages



n A time bomb pen


n A craft that was
designed to look like a crocodile









TV Mahalingam and Sarita Rani

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